The Osbournes, Season 2, Episode 12: Flea's a Crowd

A request from a reader and then some news before we to this week’s review.

First off, a reader had the following question, which due to my not have my copy of the second season currently, I cannot answer: In Episode Nine of the second season, a song is heard in the background when Kelly came down to the club in Vegas and had a fit with Jack. The reader believes that the words "down at the starlight motel" are in the song. Anyone with info, please sent it on to me at the address listed at the end of the column and I’ll pass it along to the reader and here for those of you who are now wondering as well.

Secondly, regular readers may notice a shift in the titling of the article this week. Last week I referred to the episode as being Episode One of the third season. It was named this way for a few reasons:

The first season of The Osbournes was only ten episodes long, with a few months breaking up that season with the second season that started in the fall last year. Ten episodes were then aired, followed by another break before the new batch of ten episodes began airing last week. References by the family, MTV, and reviewers have commonly referred to this season as being the third. The Osbournes were contracted to do 20 more episodes after the first season. Sharon tried to get the family out of doing the final ten, which would also lead one to believe that the seasons would be broken up into ten episodes each.

However, if you go to the MTV official site for the program, you’ll see last week’s “premiere” episode listed as “Episode 11.” Now how you can have episode eleven of a season be a “premiere” is a good question, but nonetheless that’s the way MTV is promoting the new episodes – as a continuation of Season Two. Why? My only guess is that they want to make it look like the series will be only two seasons old once they are done with these ten. There may be some good reasons for this, but the only ones I can think of aren’t really very good, so it’s really a guess at this point why they are doing it this way.

Anyway, to keep the reviews here uniformed with MTV’s reality, we’ll start addressing the episodes in the same manner that they are on the official website.

Speaking of last week’s episode, it was announced on June 16 that the ratings for the “premiere” (see two paragraphs above) came in with a rating of 3.4 million. The reviewers immediately jumped on this as being the sign of the apocalypse and all should fear for their lives. Okay, they didn’t really say that, but many did seem to hold it as some distorted reference to the decline in ratings from the premiere episode of Season Two (which was 6.6 million). Maybe they’re just giddy that the show may end soon. Unfortunately for them, and as some reviewers quickly pointed out, getting 3.4 million on a cable television show is still placing the program within or near the top ten cable shows for the week. So while some reviewers may see 3.4 million as “laughable,” MTV certainly would not find it dismal at all.

It may however be the clincher to the end of the deal between the family and the network. As reported last week, the family has really started to move off in different directions now and the show’s premise is pretty much played out by the time these ten episodes are over. It’s been a good run, and I would think an occasional special by the family would do well in the ratings, but as a regular series, this looks like the end.

In other television news, storm clouds are already starting to form over Sharon’s new talk-show. Again, it appears to be more of people just waiting for things to fail with the family than anything that is actually happening so far. The main report is that Sharon has so many assistants and helpers working with her on the show that the program is stalling out even before the first episode can be filmed. We’ll see how it progresses as the summer goes along, however.

The only other news is that of Kelly coming forward recently to discuss the Valentine Day break-up between her and boyfriend Bert (from the Used, and who was seen earlier in Season Two). Kelly seems to blame her parents for the break-up, stating that they were always bugging Bert, trying to get him to clean up his act. Kelly did go on to say that she was glad the relationship was over, however. Just goes to show that nothing good ever comes from a guy named Bert. Just ask Ernie.

But that’s all in the future at this point in the series, as we turn to Episode Two of . . . I mean, Episode Twelve of The Osbournes.

The episode starts with Ozzy speaking gibberish. No actually, he’s speaking German, and seems to be doing a decent job of it at first (at least, as far as I know, since I do not know any German; he really could be speaking gibberish and as long as the closed-captioning says it is German, I’ll believe it). Ozzy then starts messing up the scripted speech he has in front of him on a small card. Although he gets some assistance, he can’t seem to say that the show will be on in Germany as of January 19th).

After the opening credits, there is another montage of the dogs, only this time it is of the dog scratching like crazy. Well, that’s better than the animal montages we got in earlier episodes. In the kitchen, a woman tells Ozzy that after she had visited the previous Friday, she had gone home with flea bites all over her body. Ozzy believes the place is becoming a flea-pit.

In Sharon’s room, Robert and Sharon start explaining the plot of the Burt Reynolds movie, Deliverance, to a bored Jack. Robert keeps saying that it is “like a documentary, but it isn’t.” I think he means that the movie is extremely intense. After all, when you see it is Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty in the movie, one would unlikely think it was a true documentation of their canoeing trip. Sharon then asks Robert and Jack where they would go white-water rafting if they had the options of three places. Jack looks like he doesn’t understand the question, while Robert thinks about it for a bit. Robert finally answers with the Amazon. Sharon tells him that it is the worst place to go, due to the bizarre bugs found there, “ . . . and the tribes.”

Robert states that he always wanted go to Brazil because they have plants down there that “make you see fire. And you’ll be like, ‘Whoa, fire.’” Robert sounds much like Jack Handey of Deep Thoughts here in print, but it really seems as if it was a conversation from late at night when everyone is not quite thinking clearly. Sharon says she couldn’t handle being out in nature because she cannot stand the idea of something laying eggs on her.

Which brings us back to the fleas. We next see Robert and Jack in the kitchen/living-room watching television. Robert finds a yellow flea on his arm and shows it to Jack. They try to smash it, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. Robert sighs and the dogs scratch some more.